


Namptha the Novakid

by TeleportPublishing



Series: NTN [1]
Category: Starbound (Video Game)
Genre: Apex (Starbound), Avian (Starbound), Floran (Starbound), Glitch (Starbound), Hylotl (Starbound), Multi, Novakid (Starbound), Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25635646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeleportPublishing/pseuds/TeleportPublishing
Summary: Earth is gone, and so are its customs, people and principles. The Protectorate has dissolved. Nothing left to do but move on.Her institution shattered, Namptha Pleione does what her folks do best and keeps moving forward. No longer tied to any code but her own, the former Peacekeeper has done well for herself; having colonized a vacant planet under her own flag, carved out a distinct reputation for herself, made friends with people of all stripes and taken diligent note of it all, Namptha is free to do as she pleases... Until she crosses paths with a strange hylotl named Twix.Rapidly, her relaxed lifestyle slips from her fingers as she whips past the ruined remains of the Miniknog, obsessive crewmates, fake lunar bases, mysterious dungeons, venomous broadswords, dangerous bounties and even more dangerously- competent cultists, she can barely keep her codexes up to date.Not that she minds the change of pace... she is still a nova, after all.(Taking place in the same continuity as As Long as We Remember by KaeStela, N.T.N. is mostly unrelated to the plot of Starbound; however the events of the game still shape the lives of the protagonists of this story.)
Series: NTN [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858339
Kudos: 3





	1. The Closet

When Namptha came to she was in an unfamiliar bed, and as she shifted around slightly her arm brushed someone else. Pushing herself up, she glanced over and saw the cool blue glow of another novakid dozing next to her, her light radiating softly from under the blanket. Slowly, the events of the night before began coming back to her, and she vaguely remembered climbing into the bunk with the woman to her side. Looking down, she saw that she was naked, as was the sleeping figure next to her. Slipping from the bed, she made her way down the ladder to its surface and onto the wooden floor, careful not to wake any of the other occupants of the sleeping quarters as she left the room. Closing the door quietly behind her, she sighed a low fizzling sort of sound and ran a hand through her long corona.

She was near the end of her long ship, a mostly rustic looking affair that had (at one point) been the interior of a very large train before Namptha had converted it, or so her notes told her. She stood now in the connecting hall between the bunks and her collection room, and the only major feature of the small space between cars was a beautiful painting of a hylotl on the wall. Entering the next room, she made her way past the ore sample lined walls and through the next connection area, which contained a classical marble bust. The nova ignored its stoney glare as she continued the familiar path back to her own cabin in the captain’s quarters at the front of her ship.

As she passed through the next car, a saloon/breakroom kind of place, she noticed one of her mechanics, a human named Djuro, and her medic, an avian named Tlanitl, playing some card game over coffee. Neither looked up as their nude captain sauntered through the mess hall: it wasn’t a sight either of them were unfamiliar with. The captain made a habit of flirting or sleeping with nearly everyone in her crew, regardless of their gender or even species. So long as they were able and willing to consent, there was a good chance she had tried pulling them under the sheets. 

As she left the bar, she entered the industrial portion of her ship, a dim work room lined with heavy machinery and metal shelves. Slipping past the on-board teleporter, Namptha came into her research center. Pink neon lamps hung in the corners, and a glowing Peacekeeper plague hung on the wall, a reminder of her years in that corps of the Terrene Protectorate. Under the emblem was a screen that displayed the name of the vessel, the S.S. Quinkerosine. One of the ship’s chemists, a hylotl named Manai, sat at the large table at the center of the room looking over reports the ship had received from local justice systems about recent criminal activity.

Behind her was a large computer terminal, with an alert pending on the otherwise dark screen. Shaking her head, Namptha slid into the chair before the computer and opened the notification. Immediately, her shipboard artificial intelligence lattice hummed to life.

[Captain Pleione!] The text scrolled, [You have not checked in with any ship operation functions in over 11 hours. Your own custom protocol dictates that you must record daily activities at least every 3 hours outside of the allotted sleeping portion of the cycle!]

“Ah know, S.A.I.L, Ah was just… Occupied. Ah didn’t miss any important notes.” Namptha fizzed into the computer microphone, still too groggy to bother typing.

[If you insist, Captain. However, you instructed me to “never let you forget about maintaining your log.”]

Namptha groaned internally. Apparently, she had originally given S.A.I.L that directive when she was first setting up her ship years ago. Now, thousands of day cycles later, she had managed to make a habit of taking notes about her day every few hours to the point where she didn’t need to think about it- and therefore would not forget to do it. Her computer reminding her every day was unnecessary now, but she hadn't taken the time to tell S.A.I.L. to stop. She’d have to reprogram it sometime.

Glancing at the clock in the corner of the screen, Namptha noticed the time. She was usually the first one up and manually set the ship into its daytime routines, but she hadn’t had the chance to this morning, Typing a quick command into the consol, she stood up as the dim lanterns brightened and the gramophones stationed across her ship whirred to life. Namptha slipped into her cabin, and the familiar tune I was the Sun began to echo down the car’s length behind her. She closed the door and quickly scanned the room, checking for her discarded clothes.

She found them scattered around: her vest was lying on her desk, her blue button down shirt on the four poster bed against the wall, slacks and shoes on the floor not too far from that. As she dressed, she continued to search for the final piece of her normal wear. It took a good few minutes before Namptha finally located it, a black fedora with a blue band and a small golden peacekeeper emblem pinned to it. For some reason it was lying under the master console at the bow of the ship. Setting it on her head with a satisfied crackle, Namptha made her way back to her desk and picked up one of the codexes on the table.

Novakid are universally known for their poor memory, but while most only really consider it a sort of short attention-span, nova themselves are extremely aware of their inability to recall information. Most choose not to let it bother them and give into their urge to move on quickly and not stay too grounded in any particular field: with such long natural life expectancies there is a lot of time to try a lot of different things, and a lot of time to make mistakes. Namptha privately theorized that maybe novakid intentionally didn’t bother recording things because it was easier to forget, but that wasn’t something she could ever bring herself to do, personally. Her disdain for intentionally forgetting painful memories went beyond that, though. She found as a small tauri that the forgetfulness that plagued her people was much more of a detriment than any of the old lodestars let on. Because of this, she swore to write everything down, to keep meticulous note of the happenings of her life and to carefully organize it all so that even when she had no memory of the event and going over notes felt like reading someone else’s life, she would have at least an idea of what she had been through. Namptha’s codices and journals numbered in the hundreds at this point, full tomes of notes about this and that, all aggressively organized and easy to access- and it was perhaps the final nail in the coffin that labeled her an outcast of starborn society.

Her purple hand gripped the side of the book. No, now was not the time to think of the past.

Namptha opened the journal and flipped to the most recent page. While most preferred to type digitally, she could never quite leave the old paper she had used as a fledgling star behind and opted to write things manually. Every night, S.A.I.L. would take a scan of her most recent scrawlings, convert them to text and save them in its own memory banks as an easy to access backup, anyway. The page she was currently on was titled “Shit I’ve gotta remember.” and was composed primarily of shopping lists and farming supplies. After leaving her home planet Namptha had traveled the universe with no real itinerary or long term plan, exploring new worlds and climates. Eventually she came across a sleepy solar system called Procyon Wake and decided to set up shop on its smallest planet, an uninhabited ball of dirt and grass that was the third planet from the sun. Between misadventures, she returned to Procyon Wake III, completely terraforming the tiny world into massive fields of lush farmland and sprawling pastures for a myriad of crops and livestock. 

After thousands of hours of careful cultivation, the planet’s very biome began to change, the fruit the plants began bearing was swollen and juicy, the animals large and tender. It was the one place where she felt truly at home and calm. After joining the Peacekeepers she would visit it again after a long string of criminal busts, always feeling a renewed sense of hope and a feeling that maybe life was good. Namptha protected her garden home with the kind of ferocity that few would ever risk provoking, and those few who had heard of the planet accepted that it flew under the Pleione banner alone. She had also colonized the planet’s moon, though with far less results. Her only work included a small lunar settlement(which she had quickly grown bored of and abandoned), and another moon base that… well… was best left a secret. 

Below the agriculture notes were some chores she needed to take care of promptly, and the next item on that list was underlined and italicized. “Need to practice mech piloting/upgrade mech/explore space.” Namptha groaned, quiet cracking and popping noises emanating from behind her brand as she turned around and paced back over to the captain’s chair. 

She hated piloting her mech in space- it was so ungangly and sluggish, not to mention how awkward it could be to maneuver in combat. She had only bothered scrounging up the scrap parts and making one because she needed to harvest the metals in some of the asteroids that littered Procyon Wake for future projects. In the end she decided it was more of a hassle than it was worth, ditching her mech once she had gotten in range of her target and just manually mining it with her matter manipulator, using a grappling gun to maneuver in zero gravity. For all the strange caveats being a novakid entailed, Namptha was pretty glad to need neither air nor consistent pressure to survive.

However little she enjoyed flying the mech, though, she needed the practice. Many of the bounties she had queued up would require at least some brief foray into space to forcibly board criminal vessels to apprehend suspects, and she knew not being prepared with at least a few tricks up her sleeve would spell disaster. Resigned, she flicked her display over to the map of the local system. Phoenicis Rest, a particularly hot burning star, was orbited by several planets and had an outer asteroid belt. Tapping a few keys, Namptha scanned the system, searching for anomalies or other spaceships and hoped she’d come across something interesting.

A few seconds later her console gave a ping, apparently having found something. It was a small, unmarked space station. No information was given about its purpose, though it was in pristine condition and there was nearly nothing within a 100 kilometer radius, including a distinct lack of occupants onboard. Despite this, there seemed to be at least one life form which managed to give the station a danger rating of [Worse than inconceivable - this organism seems to be the most deadly thing in the universe.] Namptha cocked her head, her interest piqued. She set the ship on a course for the station, figuring it might be worth checking out. If it was really that dangerous she could just beam back to her ship. After all, S.A.I.L. identified her and every half competent person as the same threat level, so she was no stranger to its hyperbolic tendencies.

Standing up, Namtha made her way back to the desk, setting the codex down and picking up a metallic bracer before sliding her right arm into it and clipping it shut. Immediately, she felt it vibrate as it turned on; the three grooves on the back began to shimmer slightly as the weapon went into standby. She also picked up a belt with several things strapped to it, including a black whip with blue crystals studded along its length, a grappling gun, a pouch full of medical supplies, and finally her trusty matter manipulator. Slipping into the main ship, she opened one of the fridges in her work room, gulped down a quick breakfast and bid an “affectionate” farewell to several of her crew members. A slightly disheveled Namptha climbed the ladder next to her teleporter that led into her mech bay before adjusting her shirt and slipping into the dingy cab of the cobbled-together shuttle .

Three minutes later she was floating in the void, slowly drifting towards the mystery station in the distance. As she got closer, (the rate was infuriating, she really needed to replace those boosters), Namptha noticed just how small this station was. It had a single ship dock followed by four consecutive “core” rooms, which would normally have hallways branching off of them to make the station larger. S.A.I.L. informed her that the station had an abnormally low gravity setting, being comparable to some small moons. Again, it stressed how dangerous the station was, and a nervous sparking noise began echoing in the small cabin as Namptha shifted in her seat. What could possibly have S.A.I.L so on edge? This station was small and nondescript, what could it house that would warrant such a high danger rating? Namptha felt her glow flicker as her mech docked into the airlock, the hull sealing shut behind her as she activated the terrestrial movement mode for her vessel and turned off the hover pads that kept her in the air. The mech fell to the airlock floor as the limited gravity of the station asserted itself.

Pulling herself through the open bars of the mech’s cage, Namptha tried to hop out of the vehicle gracefully but completely misjudged her weight in the new environment and flung herself against the opposite wall, slamming into the closed door in front of her with a loud thud. Namptha stood up with a groan, getting to her feet and opening the hatch. She had definitely lost any element of surprise she might have had- if the operators of the station had somehow not noticed her boarding, anyone in the next room over would certainly have heard her crashing into the wall. In a tiny place like this, that may have been enough to tip everyone off.

Drawing her whip and priming her bracer, Namptha let the shimmering substance in the grooves spill out and lazily float in the air. They formed into three distinct silvery globs of liquid metal that began to slowly orbit their controller. Feeling more prepared, Namptha slipped through the door and immediately froze.

The sight before her was astonishing: the room was filled with hundreds of silhouettes of people, all exotically dressed in expensive looking clothing and scattered throughout the entire complex. Forcing the three orbs into their defensive formation, a large, extremely tough shield, she ducked down and tried taking stock of her surroundings. The room was deceptively complex; there was a web of catwalks and platforms criss-crossing above her, all of them cluttered with people. Namptha could only assume that it was an army. Prepared for a fight, she drew her whip and braced for a blow…

...That never came. Cautiously, Namptha peeked around the corner of her shield at her prospective opponents, only to realize that none had moved a muscle. Taking a closer look at the ones closest to her, she realized that they were wooden mannequins.

“Name of station discovered.” S.A.I.L beeped, abruptly breaking the silence and causing Namptha to jump. “Space station title: CLOSET.” Namptha straightened, a relieved whistling emanating from her brand. That would be why this place was so small: it was literally just a storehouse, probably for some rich fashionista who needed a place to keep their weird threads. Namptha relaxed slightly, holstered her whip, and began walking forward to examine some of the costumes, retracting her shield as she did. They were of remarkable quality, the fabric clearly expensive, each seam hand stitched. Namptha reached out to touch one of them, a beautiful red dress, when she heard a loud gasp from across the room. 

Whirling around, Namptha realized that the mannequins still didn’t explain the danger level. There must be at least someone here that could pose a serious threat.

Standing in a doorway between two rows of display dolls was a short hylotl girl wearing the strangest outfit Namptha had ever seen. A jester’s hat sat atop a long pink mantle that extended down past the girl’s waist, a white shirt was worn under a pair of red overalls and large, clunky red boots reached about halfway to her knees while a ridiculously oversized yellow cape was draped over her shoulders. Her blue scaled face wore a surprised expression, and her pigeon toed stance betrayed her unpreparedness.

For a brief moment Namptha settled: this girl was unarmed and didn’t appear to be much of a threat- the real danger must be somewhere deeper in the station. No sooner had her shoulders slackened than the stranger produced a large broadsword, the wicked blade dripping a thick, greenish fluid that sizzled as it fell to the floor. She pointed it at Namptha. 

“Who the frick are you, and what are you doing in my freaking CLOSET?” 

She was screaming, her voice shrill and painful to listen to in the massive echo chamber of a station. Namptha stumbled back and raised her hands amicably. 

“Woah, hey now- Ah’m sorry to trespass, Ah thought this place was plum abandoned!” 

Where had the girl drawn the sword? Was it hidden in that cape? If so, then she was able to conceal an ungainly weapon well enough to catch Namptha off-guard and was much more of a threat than she had initially given her credit for.

“No, you’re here for my clothes!” 

The hylotl let out a battle cry, lunging at Namptha as she did. 

“You broke into my closet; now you need to die!”


	2. A Duel

Namptha narrowly dashed out of the way of the charging madwoman and used her momentum to spin behind her assailant. She stepped back quickly as she began firing globs of liquid metal which solidified into hard spheres as they sped through the air. The hylotl turned to face Namptha and began parrying her attacks as she advanced, swatting the orbs out of the air as rapidly as the novakid could shoot them. 

Her brand humming as her mind raced; Namptha flicked through different strategies to neutralize her opponent. The girl’s sword seemed to coated in some highly corrosive fluid, and though Namptha doubted it would deal any real damage to her magnorbs or her whip, she was certain that it would eat through her thermodermis in an instant. While her back was still turned, Namptha had gotten a good look under the girl’s large cape and was sure that she had no other weapons on her person. On the other hand, considering how well she had hidden the sword she was currently using to ward off Namptha’s projectiles, she didn’t want to make any assumptions. 

Addiotionally, Namptha was hyper aware of the unfamiliar environment; there could be any number of weapons stashed around for the hylotl to attack with, but considering that this was a mere closet, Namptha didn’t think that likely. Regardless, her primary focus needed to be disarming her opponent- she didn’t fancy getting any first hand experience with that acid.

The hylotl was incredibly agile, dodging and weaving like a trained soldier, and Namptha barely had time to register when she suddenly dove forward under a magnorb, rolled, and sprang into the air. She moved with super-ichthyan speed, practically flying as she kicked Namptha in the chest and used the momentum to jump up and raise her sword.

The attacker swung the weapon down viciously, using her weight to compensate for the weak force pulling her down. With a deafening clang jagged metal clashed against rapidly hardening ferrofluid. Namptha struggled to fend the hylotl off- she had been able to summon her magnorbs and force them into a shield formation in time only because of the extra millisecond it took for her opponent to fall, and it took all her strength to keep the hylotl at bay.

Realizing her defense would soon be broken, Namptha spun on her heel and caught the other woman off guard, sending her stumbling past her. Slamming her elbow into the small of the hylotl’s back and pushing her away with her forearm for extra force, Namptha shoved her with everything she had. 

Namptha’s brand sizzled after the exertion, and she quickly scanned her environment to see where her opponent had landed, only to find her nowhere in sight. She flicked through the possibilities in her head. Had she beamed away? It was entirely possible that the ferocity with which the strangely dressed hylotl had fought was born of shock, and that when an opportunity to retreat presented itself, she had been willing to take it. It seemed possible, but the Peacekeeper doubted it. Remembering the lattice of catwalks she had seen above her earlier, Namptha quickly glanced up, only to be greeted with the sight of the hylotl silently sailing through the air towards her. With no time to react, large red boots slammed into the side of Namptha’s head, sending her reeling across the room into a clothing rack, and the owner of the boots in the opposite direction.

Stunned and with her brand buzzing painfully, a quiet static groan began to fill the air before it was joined by loud giggling. Namptha sluggishly drew the magnorbs to her, wearily scanning the room for signs of the attacker. The giggles turned into laughter, and a few meters away the hylotl’s head popped up from a fallen rack of costumes. Namptha pushed herself up as the light sound echoed in the room before gradually getting quieter and trailing off completely with an amused sigh. The hylotl hopped up cheerily and strode quickly to where the intruder sat before offering her a hand.

“Man, do you fight! That was super fun!” she chimed. 

Namptha stared at the hylotl, quietly shocked at her turn in attitude. It was reasonable to assume that the sudden amiability was a front, but something told Namptha to take her scaled hand anyway. Beaming as she helped the nova up, she continued. 

“Anyways, I know you aren’t here for my clothes. My name’s Twix! What about you?”

Straightening herself, Namptha laughed dryly. “Fight? You put me through the ringer, Ah could barely keep up…” 

It seemed as though Namptha had been getting rusty. There hadn’t been very many dangerous criminals with bounties worth pursuing in her area recently and evidently she was out of practice. Brushing herself off, she picked up her hat from where it had fallen earlier and tipped it towards Twix.

“Name’s Namptha Pleione, and damn, if you didn’t put up a fight yerself. That was one hell of a spat… My S.A.I.L. identified you as being half an ounce short of Armageddon.” 

Twix put a hand to her chest, jokingly feigning being flattered, and Namptha felt herself relax a little more.

“So wait,” the nova hummed, gesturing as she continued, “This is actually yer closet?”

Twix grinned and bounced on the balls of her feet as she responded. “Yep! I have a tailor on my ship, right, and we’ve been making clothes to portray every biome we’ve been to!” 

In a flash of motion, the hylotl sprung into the air and onto one of the catwalks above. As Namptha tracked her movement, a quiet part of her mind made note of Twix’s apparent crew, and the possibility that they could beam to her position in an instant. As she watched the girl land and skip over to a mannequin wearing a form-fitting bodysuit, she also noted that every movement Twix made was energetic and inefficient, a far cry from the fluid manner in which most hylotl moved. Her name, too, was unusual, and sounded more like something a novakid may be called.

“This one represents all the tar pits of the deserts I’ve passed through- the material is tight and sticks to your body just like tar!” 

Pulling herself up onto the platform, Namptha snickered, an entirely unprofessional sounding buzzing noise that betrayed her interests plainly. 

“Hm, tight black latex? Ah like it.”

“Thanks!” Twix chimed, wholly unaware of the lewd tone of Namptha’s comment. “This is how I feel when I explore jungles!” She continued, gesturing to a rugged action hero’s outfit, complete with ripped sleeves and a bandanna. “Like a cool adventurer tearing through dangerous foliage.”

Before she could get a word in edgewise, Namptha was being dragged around the station, her former opponent excitedly showing her all of the outfits she had produced and telling some of the stories that inspired them. 

“So this is what you’ve been up to? Explorin’ and makin’ clothes?” Namptha asked some time later. 

Twix nodded enthusiastically. “What about you?”

Namptha shrugged noncommittally. “Eh, this ‘n’ that, mostly mega farms and fuckin’, though.” 

Twix stopped mid bounce and cocked her head. “I’m sorry, what was that last one?”

Now it was Namptha’s turn to laugh.

The two fell into an easy conversation, chatting about the events that lead to their meeting. As it turned out, Twix, too, was the captain of a Protectorate crew. She had graduated a year ago, although since that day she never took a single order from the protectorate. Despite it being customary for graduates to return to earth once a year to witness the next class’s final ceremonies, Twix decided to play hookie for the ones that followed her own. It ended up saving her life. Namptha remembered the faces of her own crew when she regretfully informed them that they absolutely had to miss the ceremony- that damn slippery Dynamite Pete just had to be caught. The sadness they felt on having to miss a stupid ceremony was dwarfed by the melancholy that had been clinging to them this past week. Twix didn’t seem too troubled about losing Earth, although Namptha chalked it up to shock or denial. The loss of their home was fresh to everyone. 

The conversation’s topics grew outwards. Not just about Earth, about protectorate life in general. After Twix’s apparent first-day mutiny, she ignored her duties as a protector and went on adventures of her own. Namptha remembered having the same draw so many years ago, which is why she chose the job of peacekeeper- something that would ensure traveling to some of the most interesting destinations possible. But Namptha’s curiosity was nothing compared to Twix’s, apparently. This hylotl had gone through heck and back with some of her death defying adventures, evidently discovering some odd things along the way.

“Oh, yeah, like, three days ago, I found this weird gateway? And on the other side there was this lady that told me how we could destroy the thing that killed the Earth? She called it the Ruin or something, but obviously I said no, and-”

“Ah’m sorry,” Namptha interrupted, shocked, “but you said no?” 

“Well, yeah, saving the universe is hard and stuff.” 

Twix responded as though hers was the obvious choice. The novakid’s initial indignant surprise began to die down, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, Namptha realized Twix was probably right. Eliminating a primordial being of clearly inter-dimensional power was such a monumental task that it would be insane to hold it against someone that didn’t feel up to taking it on alone.

Namptha sighed as the distant memory of the Protectorate Code she had sworn an oath to uphold rang faintly in her mind. The oath to promote harmony and unity throughout the multiverse, the same oath the girl beside her had taken, apparently. It felt so long ago. Maybe it had been. Maybe it was pointless to try to uphold it after the eradication of the institution which lived by it.

Ignoring orders. Following orders. They had both been doing the opposite when earth was destroyed, and yet they both survived. Strange how things work out. 

Namptha shook the thoughts out of her mind. 

“What are you, Twix?” 

Twix cocked her head.

“A hylotl. Duh.”


End file.
